Tanya Trivedi
Oct 31, 2010
Undergraduate / "Being an Indian American" - favorite books, films - essay for University of Chicago. [3]
Prompt: Share with us a few of your favorite books, poems, authors, films, plays, pieces of music, musicians, performers, paintings, artists, blogs, magazines, or newspapers? Feel free to touch on one, some, or all of the categories listed, or add a category of your own.
Being an Indian American, I have woken up to classical Indian music, the smell of incense sticks, and loud chants of conceited and miraculously persuasive saints on television. I have lived around friends that listen to heavy metal and pop music for many years now. Even though I have lived in India for the first twelve years of my life and experienced living in America for five years, I have never been torn on what kind of music I should listen to, what books I would be able to relate to the most, or what poets I would prefer. That is, because arts like these are not bound to a background and they are not born for a particular country. They are merely pieces of culture, a tradition, or a taste of individuals.
My love for music was born the day I listened to the Beatles for the first time. I was proud when I was the only one in my class who knew what "Jai Guru Deva" meant. That day both my cultures collided and immersed into a wonderfully meaningful melody. And now, the love is eternal. It slithers while it passes, it slips away across the universe. To find meaning in life, I have turned to authors like Arundhati Roy, Jane Austen and Khaled Hosseini. They have all given me interpreted life in their eccentric ways. Poets like Robert Frost and Rabindranath Tagore have completed me. I am so very grateful to these paragons of humanity for simplifying the meaning of art and culture for me.
Please critique below
Prompt: Share with us a few of your favorite books, poems, authors, films, plays, pieces of music, musicians, performers, paintings, artists, blogs, magazines, or newspapers? Feel free to touch on one, some, or all of the categories listed, or add a category of your own.
Being an Indian American, I have woken up to classical Indian music, the smell of incense sticks, and loud chants of conceited and miraculously persuasive saints on television. I have lived around friends that listen to heavy metal and pop music for many years now. Even though I have lived in India for the first twelve years of my life and experienced living in America for five years, I have never been torn on what kind of music I should listen to, what books I would be able to relate to the most, or what poets I would prefer. That is, because arts like these are not bound to a background and they are not born for a particular country. They are merely pieces of culture, a tradition, or a taste of individuals.
My love for music was born the day I listened to the Beatles for the first time. I was proud when I was the only one in my class who knew what "Jai Guru Deva" meant. That day both my cultures collided and immersed into a wonderfully meaningful melody. And now, the love is eternal. It slithers while it passes, it slips away across the universe. To find meaning in life, I have turned to authors like Arundhati Roy, Jane Austen and Khaled Hosseini. They have all given me interpreted life in their eccentric ways. Poets like Robert Frost and Rabindranath Tagore have completed me. I am so very grateful to these paragons of humanity for simplifying the meaning of art and culture for me.
Please critique below